K.W. Taylorhttps://kwtaylorwriter.com
Speculative Fiction AuthorWed, 08 Mar 2017 05:31:12 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngK.W. Taylorhttps://kwtaylorwriter.com
News rounduphttps://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/05/12/news-roundup/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/05/12/news-roundup/#commentsThu, 12 May 2016 15:28:43 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=520Continue reading →]]>The Curiosity Killers was released on May 5, and broke Amazon’s top 100 in the Steampunk category. Many thanks to those who pre-ordered! If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, it’s now also available not only in paperback but in ebook format. You can find it from the publisher or at your favorite online book retailer. You can also purchase a copy at Blue Jacket Books on May 28th, when I’ll be signing copies and reading excerpts alongside my fellow Dog Star Books authors Matt Betts and J.L. Gribble.

From now until May 26, you can enter to win a Goodreads Giveaway for The Curiosity Killers, and even if you’ve already secured your own copy, you should still enter! This book makes a great gift, after all! Just hit “Enter Giveaway” from the Goodreads page.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/05/12/news-roundup/feed/2kwtaylorwriter51DrIim07hL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_indexwraiths51Rj58GG+lL._SX341_BO1,204,203,200_Upcoming multi-author book signing!https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/26/upcoming-multi-author-book-signing/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/26/upcoming-multi-author-book-signing/#commentsTue, 26 Apr 2016 13:35:19 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=470Continue reading →]]>Dog Star Books authors Matt Betts, J.L. Gribble, and I will be reading and signing our latest releases at Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, Ohio on May 28th, 1-4 pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Matt Betts is the author of the steampunk novel Odd Men Out, the dark urban fantasy Indelible Ink, and the brand new collection of subversive poetry, Underwater Fistfight.

J.L. Gribble made her debut with Dog Star with 2015’s urban fantasy Steel Victory. She will have advance copies of the second volume in this epic alternate history world, Steel Magic, available at Blue Jacket.

I’m appearing on the heels of the May 6th release of my steampunk time travel novel The Curiosity Killers, a work set partially in Dayton and featuring appearances by the Wright Brothers.

Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, Ohio, is the premiere Miami Valley retailer for a carefully selected inventory of used, rare, and out-of print books on a variety of subjects, with a new café space and frequent events. For updates and more information, see our Facebook event page, share it, and express interest or RSVP your attendance!

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/26/upcoming-multi-author-book-signing/feed/2kwtaylorwritercollagecollageThe Curiosity Killers Now Available for Pre-Order!https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/20/the-curiosity-killers-now-available-for-pre-order/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/20/the-curiosity-killers-now-available-for-pre-order/#respondWed, 20 Apr 2016 18:47:00 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=468Continue reading →]]>My first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, can now be pre-ordered. Release date is May 5, just 15 days away! I could not be more excited about my debut piece with Dog Star Books, who have been absolutely fabulous to work with.

Writing a time travel novel is no easy feat, and I tackled a lot in this book, but I think there’s really something here for everyone on the SF fan spectrum. What do SF fans like? To lump it all in as one amorphous genre is impossible, of course, but here are some fun trends I’ve seen in popular fiction and media lately that I managed to hit upon, though this is admittedly a bit tongue in cheek.

– Dudes in velvet: CHECK.

The Curiosity Killers is something I’m calling “dystopian steampunk,” stemming from a quasi-Victorian future with limited technology. Other parts are set in 1888 and 1910, so there is certainly more of legitimately Victorian/Edwardian vibe. And dudes in, yes, velvet. And bowler hats. And tweed. And ladies in long skirts. It’s all very fetching fashion, believe me.

– Time travel to stop Jack the Ripper: CHECK.

This is a bit of a trope. If it’s not saving JFK, it’s stopping or figuring out who Jack the Ripper is, right? But in The Curiosity Killers, I’ve taken this to a bit of a different place, and integrated several other famous unsolved murders into the mix.

– The threat of paradoxes: CHECK.

Some of the best time travel novels seem to ignore the concept of paradox problems, whereas I had a beta reader whose sole job was to find paradox problems for me and help me avoid them. Did I succeed? I hope so, and boy was it tough! There’s no Marty McFly getting erased from existence moments here!

– Weird X-Files creatures: CHECK.

Do you like cryptids? Do you wonder what lurks out in the darkness late at night? Do men in black and the thought that maybe–just maybe–the Mothman was an alien tickle at your subconscious? You will be delighted with a subplot that manages to link these mysterious creatures with one of the most famous mass disappearances in American history.

– Tough as cookies heroines: CHECK.

This book features several amazing women, from the Wright Brothers’ sister Katharine to FBI agent Violet Lessep and time travel agency assistants Kris Moto and Alison Keller, ladies hold their own in this novel, and perform admirably.

What else are you looking for in a SF novel? Comment away, and I’ll tell you why The Curiosity Killers is sure to fit your reading needs.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/04/20/the-curiosity-killers-now-available-for-pre-order/feed/0kwtaylorwriterAlways. Be. Submitting.https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/03/07/always-be-submitting/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/03/07/always-be-submitting/#commentsMon, 07 Mar 2016 15:05:27 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=460Continue reading →]]>Just a quick thing today: I’ve given this advice before, but I think it bears repeating. Writing with an eye toward publication means rejection. If a piece gets rejected but the editors or agents gave no notes, unless you yourself really think there’s something needing some tinkering, get that back out on the submission rounds ASAP. Ideally, when you were choosing where to submit to, you picked out more than one market in the first place, so on to the next one. If that file isn’t getting emailed to another editor within the hour, you are going to languish in the morass of “woe is me”-isms and not make any progress.

New writers, seriously. Perseverance is what separates someone with a big publication record from someone without one. Rejection is not about you as a human, you as a cool person, you as a smart person, or you as anything other than the writer of the words on that page. It does not speak to your overall value and may indeed have way more to do with the fit between your piece and that market. Yes, if a piece gets notes back or keeps getting rejected, maybe it’s time to rework it (note I did not say “delete” or “retire” it; a lot of work can be salvaged more than you think). But if you get one “no,” that in no way means the next response won’t be a “yes.” Chill out and re-send it.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/03/07/always-be-submitting/feed/7kwtaylorwriterThe Curiosity Killers cover is here!https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/02/11/the-curiosity-killers-cover-is-here/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/02/11/the-curiosity-killers-cover-is-here/#respondThu, 11 Feb 2016 16:19:35 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=458Continue reading →]]>Head over to SF Signal to see Brad Sharp’s absolutely stunning cover for The Curiosity Killers! I’m honored and delighted and couldn’t be happier with this gorgeous depiction of all the crazy elements blending together. The Curiosity Killers is my first science fiction novel and will be out this spring from Dog Star Books. I’ll be at ConCoction in Cleveland in March to discuss it!]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/02/11/the-curiosity-killers-cover-is-here/feed/0kwtaylorwriterTwo New Works in Progresshttps://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/28/two-new-works-in-progress/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/28/two-new-works-in-progress/#respondThu, 28 Jan 2016 18:42:09 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=439Continue reading →]]>I’m hard at work these days on The Girl with Mechanical Wings, the second book in the Jonson’s Exotic Travel series that kicks off this spring with the release of The Curiosity Killers (Dog Star Books). But for 2016, I have a goal of completing at the very least two other works in progress:

The Lugubrious Unknown is a collection of surreal, speculative poetry; and

The Kite Bird is my first foray into high fantasy, with crossover appeal in paranormal romance and new adult fiction as well.

Both titles are subject to change. The poetry collection’s first draft is complete and in the editing stage right now, and The Kite Bird is fully outlined and about 20% done in the writing stage. Meanwhile, The Girl with Mechanical Wings is chugging along and should have its first draft done before summer.

All of these works technically represent departures for me, experiments with new forms and genres. Even The Girl with Mechanical Wings is a little different, as it plays with dieselpunk and a different main protagonist than The Curiosity Killers. I look forward to seeing how productive I can be this year. So far, this first month of 2016 has somehow reinvigorated a prolific, energized creative spirit in me.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/28/two-new-works-in-progress/feed/0kwtaylorwriterA Tribute to David Bowie: “Alter Ego,” a short storyhttps://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/11/a-tribute-to-david-bowie-alter-ego-a-short-story/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/11/a-tribute-to-david-bowie-alter-ego-a-short-story/#respondMon, 11 Jan 2016 15:50:08 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=433Continue reading →]]>I wrote this story, “Alter Ego,” many years ago as an experiment to try to integrate the narratives of several iconic characters David Bowie either created or portrayed. Bowie meant so much to me as a musician, actor, and artist, and the news of his passing today is deeply saddening. This story was first published in my 2012 limited edition chapbook, Ages and Aliens, and now appears in my collection Grinning Cracks, along with another story semi-inspired by Bowie called “Encounter.”

“Alter Ego” blends some backstory of Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth, the film version of which marked Bowie’s leading film role debut in 1976 and is my attempt to combine in with the Major Tom character that winds his way through several Bowie songs (“Space Oddity,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Hallo Spaceboy,” and, I think, “Blackstar,” as well as other artists songs like Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” and, arguably, Elton John’s “Rocket Man”). I also wanted to provide a hint of reference to Labyrinth, perhaps the favorite Bowie role and soundtrack for folks of my generation, as well as some hints of Ziggy Stardust and Bowie’s own life. Enjoy.

***

WITH MY HAND ON THE LEVER, I take one last gulp of precious air before flinging the panel up. The rushing, hissing sound fills my ears, and then just as I open my eyes wider to take in the beauty of the stars, I feel pulled, pushed, sucked, and beaten all at once. Full, inky blackness saturates my field of vision, and I lose consciousness.

When it finally dawned on me what to do, I was calm. Not the pre-occupied, lethargic calmness that I used to fake, but actual happiness. This time I had a plan, and it worked perfectly.
The hardest part was pretending with Jennifer. She was the only one who ever filtered through my haze, even a little bit. I had to actually lie to her, which I’d never done before. “When will you be back?” she asked before I boarded.
“In eight days.”
She waved. I smiled. Eight days from now, I thought, will be the worst day of her life. But because my pain was greater than my love for her, I went ahead.

This is something I didn’t expect. My extremities feel prickly, tingly. My eyelids are still heavy and refuse to open. Technically, this is not part of the plan. Thirty minutes go by. I drift back to something like sleep. I dream of being home. I dream of a trip I always wanted to take but never did, to the ancient ruins in the countryside. Only a three-hour drive from the city, but I never went. And then I wake up for good, struggling to get the eyes open, get the body moving again. Finally, with much effort, I see.
A sunset, glowing intense amber, red, and purple, dark colors against a clear sky. The half-circle sun is a flame at the horizon. Its rays reflect in the pale sand that reaches as far as I can see. I’m sitting on this sand. I touch it, and it’s not grains but a soft, yielding material that only resembles sand. There’s a quality about each grain that reminds me of rice or bubbles. Dotting the landscape are deciduous trees, oaken and solid, green leaves dappled with the last bits of the day’s light, trunks looking green also, as if covered by a thick, furry moss. Far away, beyond a series of dunes, I see a darker mass of ground. As the sun continues to set, it’s hard to tell what this is. As I try to stand, getting my balance and stabilizing my thin, rubbery legs, I look all the way around in every direction. The same beige ground, the same few trees everywhere I look, except for that strange place in the distance. I hear a light wind and feel its breeze. I start to walk.

When I was little, my mother used to tell me about the night I was born. A cliché dark and stormy night it was, the midwife tense because of my mother’s medical conditions. My father had been assigned the task of noting the time of birth, but when asked later if he’d checked his watch, he claimed he’d forgotten in the confusion of the moment. It was my older brother, ten at the time, who said he heard the church bell tower strike thirteen at the exact moment my first infant wail sounded through the house.

As night cloaks itself tighter around this unfamiliar terrain, just like a desert, it grows colder and colder. I am not dressed properly. My uniform is a one-piece jumpsuit, material designed to be aerodynamic but not particularly warm. To stave off the chill, I try to run, but I can only do so a short distance as weakness overtakes me. This has been a long trip, and I can’t remember when I last ate. I am perhaps even truly sick. Pushing my body beyond its limits seems a bad idea, and so I wrap my arms around myself and hunch my shoulders against the wind. I can no longer make out details in the distance, now that it’s dark. No moon rises to help me see my way. I begin to feel dizzy. If I freeze to death in the night…well, that would be closer to what I had intended in the first place.

I went through the motions of a proper life with Jennifer. We danced and drank and made love. She was the only one I ever sang to, and she wrote me tender little poems that she left in odd places all over the house for me to happen upon. I loved her, but she was also one of the people from whom I most needed to get away. If I had stayed much longer, the thought of all the other things I would have been expected to go through with to behave normally were just too horrible.

It is much warmer when I wake up, and the sky is a bright and clear blue. The ground seems lighter and more yellow than it looked last night. I’m much closer to my destination. Finding out what that actually is proves frightening, though. For some inexplicable reason, while walking last night, I had assumed that this place was uninhabited. Now, as I stand a few yards away from a series of constructed buildings, all oddly shaped but clearly built by sentient minds and able hands, I know this assumption is false. There are at least six structures, rounded buildings with holes for doors and windows, all arranged around a larger, taller building made from stone, not dirt and wood as the others are. The sweeping tiers of tapered cones towards the top of the edifice make me think of a castle.

When my brother came down with pneumonia, he strung himself up by his belt, dangling his ravaged body off the rod in the tiny, institutional closet in his tiny, institutional room. Father treated his death as the chance to turn me into everything a person should be, hence all the trouble and pressure and classes. I wanted to be more like my brother, the way he could’ve been without the voices in his head and the tremors in his hands. In Father’s view, it was creative thinking that turned my brother into a crying wreck locked in the fetal position under the kitchen table, never mind that it was our parents’ genes that had created his psychosis in the first place.

The day wears on longer than I think it should, and the castle gets farther away the closer I get to it. Crossing a distance of a few yards shouldn’t take hours. A tree is very near, and I stumble against it, my head swimming. I slide to the ground, a pile of bones and blistered skin. My uniform feels dusty, and my fingernails have brown, gritty clusters of dirt collecting under the tips. My teeth feel porous and fuzzy to the touch of my papery tongue. I shut my eyes. The skin around my eyelids is tight and uncomfortable. I try to sink my body into the ground as if it were a springy, yielding mattress. I do not sleep, but feel the warmth of the day drain from the golden ground as the sun slips away.
I feel rested and better after a time, the coolness of the night wind soothing my pains, and I wobble to my feet.

I once went without sleep for four days. I began to get a blistering headache after twenty-eight hours, but that went away sometime later on the second day. Hallucinations came, subtle and inoffensive. I laughed as though drunk. On the third day I was able to do little else than sit and smoke cigarettes. Jennifer tried to entertain me, playing gin and watching films, but when she asked how long I planned to do this, I just shrugged. I would watch her sleep, envious, but unwilling to give in myself. Finally, my body betrayed me, and I jolted upright from the floor to find I’d passed out for several hours. I slid beside Jennifer in the bed and felt her stir but pretended to pass out. She stroked my hair. I longed to be able to find the gesture pleasant.

The castle seems much taller, a dark monolith reaching for the sky. The stone is a deep slate grey, solid and bleak. I look hard, squeezing my eyes nearly shut, to try to make out a door. It’s hard to see in the pre-dawn haze. Near the corner, I feel a section of the wall nudge. I peer closer and see a crack in the stone and can almost make out dim light behind it. I move my hands around that side and discover a deeper depression, slightly smaller than my hand. I put my fist into it and push. The door does not open, but I feel movement and grinding, as if there is some obstacle on the other side. In my tired, hungry mind, something occurs to me, and I move the door the opposite way, pulling it. With a groan, the heavy stone spins away from its arch, and I walk inside.
From deeper in the building, a form emerges, silent and dark, surrounded by heavy robes. It pauses when it catches sight of me. A weak voice calls out a greeting. I stop, standing still. The robes draw back from the creature and fall to the ground to reveal the figure in more regal posture. It has pale skin and is tall and thin with long, silvery hair. I cannot tell its sex. Its eyes are sharp and intense. It regards me coldly, but with a hint of curiosity.
“Who are you?” The voice is far more hoarse and reedy than I thought it would be, given its regal image.
“You speak my language?”
“Of course.” Then a glint of recognition flashes behind its eyes. “I know you.”
“Who are you?”
“Your future or your past,” comes the reply. “Your choice.” In a fit of coughing and a cloud of dust, the figure falls to the ground, motionless, withering, turning to a shrunken skeleton before my eyes. I begin to weep.

I buried the creature I came to think of as the royal head and sole subject of this desolate land. I buried it under a tree, muttering words over the small grave. I moved into its home, took over its life, and became something other than just a visitor.
I learned to create my subjects, my summoned children who appeared before me to run through the structures I erected up and around the castle. If they found their way out again, they left. If they didn’t, they were mine.
And then, eventually, I created one who looked familiar. Raven hair. A dim memory of my wife slid through my mind, and I found myself hoping this child would stay. “I love you,” I told her. And she smiled brilliantly, her eyes and teeth like stars leading the way back home.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/11/a-tribute-to-david-bowie-alter-ego-a-short-story/feed/0kwtaylorwriterPermission to write: why a writing retreat offers 4 great benefits to your creativityhttps://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/05/permission-to-write-why-a-writing-retreat-offers-4-great-benefits-to-your-creativity/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/05/permission-to-write-why-a-writing-retreat-offers-4-great-benefits-to-your-creativity/#commentsTue, 05 Jan 2016 21:13:13 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=431Continue reading →]]>Time, space, community, and the sensory research benefits of travel: these are the four primary benefits of a writing retreat, and attending one can make a huge difference for your writing. If you’re stalled on a work in progress, if you need to workshop something and see if it’s working, if you want to start something new but constantly get interrupted, spending a weekend away from your regular, daily life can work wonders.

I’m fascinated by studying the creative process of female authors in particular. Women are told to “have it all,” to “lean in,” and to strive twice as hard for about half the benefits. I think female authors often feel pressure to cast their writing to the side and not give it the time and attention it needs. I think, too, there are things preventing not only publication of more female authors or more critical acclaim, but obligations preventing the work itself.

“A woman,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” 1 Woolf spoke of both a literal and allegorical space during a time when poetic license, publishing, access to funding and education were easier for men of all classes to obtain but were usually only possible for women with some family money permitting the undertaking of “leisure class” avocations. Writing can mean a lot of things to lots of people—an artistic undertaking, a career (or second career one hopes will become the primary one), a small business, or a hobby. Creative writers of fiction, poetry, and essays often describe writing as a need akin to an addiction, yet they also just as frequently discuss roadblocks to it—creative blocks, lack of time, lack of access to spheres for learning to better their craft, lack of publishing opportunities, lack of reliable technology…the list could go on. True, writing can be as simple and inexpensive an act as finding a pencil and piece of paper and requires only so much education as fundamental literacy, but still, to write professionally, to write often and well and unfettered from concern of “I ought to be doing something more concretely useful to my family,” you do need more. A secondhand laptop. A basic word processor program. A training ground. And, above all, permission.

Permission to write comes first from within. A writer has to allow that writing is as important a thing to creative health, mental health, career health as attending job training, seeing a therapist, sending the kids to school, or taking a yoga class. Human beings without some physical, mental, or creative outlet outside of their primary obligations lack some level of motivation to continue doing those primary obligations. For some, family and friends can fill this void, but even still, we need our arts, crafts, books, yarn, running shoes, hiking boots…something. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or, in the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper 2:

“Some boys take a beautiful girl
And hide her away from the rest of the world
I want to be the one to walk in the sun
Oh girls they want to have fun”

When we are thus hidden “away from the rest of the world” by failing to express ourselves, we subtly acknowledge that writing is a less serious pursuit than the rest of our lives. We delegitimize it, even prioritizing it less than other pursuits, perhaps because it is so often solitary. Think of anything you do to unwind after your day—how many of those activities can be done socially? Communally? Or at least can be done with other people in the room? Writing, for many, requires an intensity of focus conducive to shut doors and noise-canceling headphones. This sort of focus certainly also “hides [us] away,” but I would argue that eschewing this sort of artistic hiding ultimately hides us more—we then have no voice on the stage, no realized works, not even a trunk of manuscripts left unpublished. Which sort of hiding is more tragic? And which is merely necessary for the creative process?

A huge segment of my friends and acquaintances are writers. Many are published. Many teach writing. Many wish they could write more and have more time for their craft. Many miss the forced deadlines of writing programs or National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) or have fallen out of the habit of writing every day. I hear a lot of sorrow in the voices of people talking about lack of uninterrupted stretches of several hours, voicing the reality that some folks’ concentration styles requires a great burst of word volume to start a project. One friend and former classmate reported she occasionally checks herself into a hotel for the weekend just to get writing done, away from the distractions of her regular life. Still others participate in bootcamps—writers tapping away in a room together for hours at a time. I’ve done a few of those over the course of a day, weekend, and some as long as a week. These are all great and have their unique benefits. But of all these special approaches to writing, what I’ve come to see as a truly viable option that affords the time, space, and novelty of sensory input needed for productivity as well as the chance to network and commune collegially with other writers is a retreat weekend.

There’s something inherently different about a retreat weekend that can’t be replicated by other means. A solitary hotel stay is great for focus, but it lacks the novelty of sensory stimulation and it certainly lacks community and networking. The bootcamps I’ve done with colleagues are also great, but often we’re just holed up in an empty classroom during the 9-to-5 for a week. This model is great for focus and certainly doesn’t lack for community and networking, but it has even less novelty of sensory stimulation than a well-appointed hotel or bed and breakfast—you are literally in the most familiar of environments and go back home to your normal routine in the evenings. In some cases, the door of a windowless room is routinely locked during writing sprints, giving you literally nothing but your laptop and bare walls to inspire you. A retreat weekend is something very different, something that aligns the sensory, community, and focus, and allows for a great deal of flexibility and freedom of process.

Last spring, I attended the Bourbon Ridge Writing Retreat hosted by Raw Dog Screaming Press in the Hocking Hills region of southeastern Ohio (some great photos are posted on RDSP’s web site). I got to see old friends, made new friends, and managed in the course of just a few days to not only make great progress on a novella but got much-needed editing work done on several projects, outlined a new YA series that had been up to that point just a flicker of an idea, and taught myself to use Scrivener—a beast of a tutorial that otherwise would eat up several evenings for over a week if done piecemeal. I read bits of other writers’ work, got to observe some of their creative processes, participated in a group reading, went hiking under crystal blue skies in the crisp, early spring air, and joined in the formation of so many ridiculous inside jokes about the limited fire starting skills of the group and a still-lingering debate about bad (or very good) supermarket beer. I’ve since read some of these fellow writers’ work and found a new community I know I could still turn to for discussion, idea inspiration, and professional contacts. From that weekend alone, I learned a new poetic form, I talked other writers out of plot knots in their own work, and the sensory experience provided setting inspiration that I’ll always be able to draw on for future projects.

It may be cliché to need a cabin in the woods to set one’s head to creative thinking, but nature, exercise, and travel can indeed shake perspective just enough to get the juices flowing. I’ve written before about the benefits of endorphins and creativity and how yoga and meditation are integral to my writing process. Hiking is seen by many as a form of walking meditation, and walking itself has enough cardiovascular benefit to encourage endorphin production. In fact, a new study recently discussed how leptin—not just endorphins—can also contribute to the sensation known as a “runner’s high.” Whatever the chemical mechanism in the body, exercise produces great results for the creative person: greater focus, a feeling of euphoria and well-being that may energize and inspire, and the benefit of sensory input during an outdoor walk, run, or hike. Observing nature (or any new setting, really) with all five senses is key to drawing on that material later—every smell of a flower, ever flick of a squirrel’s tail, every cool breeze across your cheek can be mined for the same moment in a story, book, or poem.

Travel itself is research. Even mundane moments of travel, like the Samuel Beckett-esque wait I endured picking up a rental car after a bumpy flight. As I stood in a winding, too-long line full of other weary travelers, I noticed the streaky fingerprints on the half-empty vending machine, the snatches of overheard cell phone conversations, and the grim conditions of the rental car office’s walls. The faces of the employees were haggard, unsmiling, and spoke of long hours and likely a stream of less patient customers than I. All of that input is now fair use in my writing. During the same trip, I made a simple observation of the jauntily-painted door of a brownstone I drove past. I snapped a cell phone photo of it and wrote an entire horror story about what might dwell behind that flashy rectangle of wood and brass. Travel expressly to somewhere beautiful is even more a wellspring of writing research. In high school, I spent a week at a beach house in Oak Island, North Carolina, and now over twenty years later I still write about that house, that stretch of sand, the play of the full moon on the ocean and the strange effects of seaside humidity that melted lipstick in the tube and frizzed my hair into a coppery cotton ball. If called upon to write a scene of someone lying in a hammock regarding the ocean, it would be that hammock and that ocean.

At the Bourbon Ridge retreat, I filed away moments on my drive from my urban Dayton neighborhood to the retreat site, off gravel-lined roads that wound and dove around much hillier terrain than exists in the western half of the state. I blasted Taylor Swift and gloried in sunshine and freedom. I filed away into that sensory research place the cabin’s leather couches (perfect for napping or long conversations), the feel of smooth-polished wood floors (slippery under our socked feet), the play of firelight across laughing faces, the slip of muddy terrain, sun through leaves, and the call of birds in the trees. I filed away coffee sipped on the front porch on chilly mornings and sunshine on bare shoulders in late afternoon. And I filed away the heady rush of returning safely home to a comforting and unhealthy dinner of cheeseburgers and the good night’s sleep of the exhausted. So in addition to all the friends, laughter, and intensely focused productivity, there are wellsprings of travel material I can call upon when I need it.

Because, too, cementing a place into your writing allows the memory to linger longer. I used an old apartment of mine as the basis for Sam Brody’s pad in The Red Eye, and I know doing so caused me to remember that apartment more vividly than other places I lived but didn’t similarly immortalize. Since getting serious about my fiction writing, I’ve tended to observe places with a keener eye, to listen to conversations with a more attentive ear, and to always keep one part of my brain in a sort of continuously-recording mode for this Method approach to writing. Look, smell, listen, and then write and remember.

If there were a certain place and group of people and the time needed to dive deep into a piece of your writing, if it would also provide novelty for the senses, and if it allowed you a break from your regular routine, wouldn’t you take it? Again, we go back to Woolf’s conundrum, that in some ways we’re talking about a privileged system, unavailable to all, and we must acknowledge that life and circumstances and responsibilities may not always allow a formal writing retreat. I’m excited about the Broadkill Resort as something different, though, for two reasons. First, it’s a fixed location, not just a one-and-done event, so being able to hold retreat weekends and have rentals of the property at different times of the year that might work better for some people’s schedules is key to accessibility. Secondly, they’re organizing a scholarship fund to make it possible for writers to attend for free. As their fundraising mission statement says, “a place free of distractions, designed for thought and inspiration, is the perfect thing to jumpstart a creative project,” and Broadkill’s scholarship “is a conscious investment in dreams and people.” That’s beautiful—that’s saying to the world that making art matters, that writing is indeed vital, and that its unfettered production should be available to anyone who wants to try.

Chris Baty, the creator of National Novel Writing Month, stated in his 2004 book No Plot? No Problem! that a 50,000 word novel can be written (at the draft stage, not the polished-and-edited stage) in about 40 hours. A three-day weekend spent with limited distractions, beautiful scenery, and nurturing, creative people might garner about 20 hours of active work time—or half a novel. Thus, what Broadkill is basically doing is not just a scholarship for a communal vacation; it’s patronage. It’s giving a writer the funds to sit down and get the words out—and getting the words out amongst beaches, wildlife refuges, historic villages, boardwalks, and all the scenic amenities of an eastern seaside town.

If diving in and attending an event at Broadkill seems like too much in your hectic life but you still want to start to carve out time and space for writing, I do think removing a few simple roadblocks can help:

– A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about how a $40 piece of hardware increased my writing productivity, and this idea holds true. Figure out what technological issues you’re experiencing and brainstorm ways around them. If you need a computer, look into second-hand machines or tablets. With Google docs and access to free wifi at a library or café, your investment here could be very minimal—far less than you assume. And if learning new technology is daunting, libraries can again be a good resource for free training.

– You’d be surprised what you can get done in just five to thirty minutes a day. I wrote my short story “The Storytellers” on my phone’s notepad in five-minute increments when walking to meetings. As a flash piece, it’s short, and those five-minute increments built up over a few weeks; the final version was eventually published in the October 2013 edition of Flash Fiction World (since republished in my collection Grinning Cracks). If you’re in your car a lot, you could consider dictating story ideas with either your phone or a voice recorder. If you commute via public transportation, this is a perfect time to get some writing in, even if it’s longhand. A lot of The Curiosity Killers was written in twenty minute bursts at the end of my lunch hour, and I used to scribble ideas for the first early drafts of The Red Eye on scrap paper next to my cash register when I worked a retail job. If you have enough down time to play Candy Crush while waiting in line at the grocery store, you have enough down time to get a few lines of a story written. I’ve been working on the outline for The Girl with Mechanical Wings almost exclusively longhand at a coffeehouse down the street from my house for a max of about a half an hour each time.

– Let go of your internal editor during the first draft. Don’t even call it a first draft—call it Draft Zero. Let the words flow and worry about editing them later.

– I’m a big believer in the Pomodoro Technique if you have a longer stretch of time to spend but need frequent breaks. Do your work in spurts of twenty-five minutes with five minute breaks, and you’ll be surprised at your productivity.

The luxury of the uninterrupted stretches of time is obvious and compelling, and I’m excited to support Broadkill Resort and see what’s in store there for 2016. We’re less than a week into this new year, too, so consider adding a greater dedication to your writing to your list of resolutions. If it hasn’t worked in the past to write in short chunks of time, consider a retreat. If you stare with pressure and terror at a blank page when you know you have hours to spend on a piece, start off small and build up. Whatever your process has been, try something new. Who knows? You just might have a book by the end of the year—or even sooner.

1 From A Room of One’s Own, 1929.

2 “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was originally written in 1979 by Robert Hazard, but Lauper changed the lyrics on her 1983 album She’s So Unusual, changing it into a female POV and making the feminist message more overt.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2016/01/05/permission-to-write-why-a-writing-retreat-offers-4-great-benefits-to-your-creativity/feed/1kwtaylorwriterNaNoWriMo 2015: Success in Failurehttps://kwtaylorwriter.com/2015/12/01/nanowrimo-2015-success-in-failure/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2015/12/01/nanowrimo-2015-success-in-failure/#respondTue, 01 Dec 2015 19:23:56 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=429Continue reading →]]>I’ve been participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) every few years since 2002. I wrote three Sam Brody books originally as NaNoWriMo projects, including The Red Eye, as well as a paranormal romance novel (Blood Makes Noise). A lot of these hastily written first drafts were side projects at the time, thus a few of them haven’t made it much past the first or second draft stage and are things I still consider “works in progress” rather than ready to go on submission. I’ve given workshops on NaNo tips and strategies, written posts on this very blog about it, and incorporated it into my teaching. I’m also at work on a non-fiction book about how to apply the NaNo writing binge model to writing even faster, with a goal of completing a first draft in as little as three days.

If you’re not familiar with the basic rules of NaNoWriMo, it’s an international challenge to write a work of fiction of 50,000 words or more in precisely thirty days. The challenge takes place in November, partly due to its high number of American federal holidays, allowing for catch-up and breaks in routine from one’s work and school obligations. There is no reward for “winning” at this challenge, other than bragging rights, although many NaNo authors have had their November works published. In addition to my own urban fantasy novel publication in 2014, lots of other pretty neat books originally written during NaNoWriMo.

Now that NNWM ’15 is officially over, and I’ve failed at it for the first time myself, I’m struggling to articulate the best and the worst of the challenge and what its grand purpose really best serves. Because, yes, I failed this year, and failed pretty spectacularly, but it matters not one whit in the grand scheme of my novel writing career.

My first attempts at NaNo were among the first times I’d ever written something longer than a short story. I did write one novel before my first NaNo, an experimental bindungsroman called Battlefield which I will likely never, ever revise or submit anywhere. And while this is currently my only “trunk novel” (a novel shoved into a proverbial trunk and never published, at least not during an author’s lifetime), it likely won’t be my last. After Battlefield failed to inspire me enough to continue working on it, I turned to short stories and essays and thought writing novels was scary. Short works were my primary public writing output until 2011, when Etopia Press released my first novella, We Shadows Have Offended, and in the background of it all, NaNoWriMo participation showed me that I was perhaps wrong to doubt my ability to write something longer.

To succeed at reaching the NaNo goal, you can go about it one of two ways: write in long stretches a few days of the week, or write a little bit every day. The latter method is better and usually requires only an hour or two daily commitment. By producing at least 1,667 words each day for thirty days, you will, indeed, have at least 50,000 words written on November 30th. You could also accomplish this solely on weekends if you had to, gluing yourself to your chair for about six hours each of a Saturday and Sunday all month and doing little else. Baty talks at length in No Plot? No Problem! about the reality that a first-draft really only takes between forty and fifty hours of work. This is also the premise of my own book discussing the three-day novel strategy.

But it sometimes isn’t the sheer perseverance required to sit and churn out likely not-very-good prose very quickly. Sometimes it’s a need to revise as you go, which is time consuming, a need to hit professional deadlines, or a need to work on something different from what you’ve been writing of late. I write because it’s my primary creative outlet, and as a creative outlet, I want to feel inspired by something before setting off on a particular new project (and only that project, eschewing all others). Still, even I have writing-based obligations, forthcoming releases to proofread, invitations to submit to anthologies, and the need to do at times high-level research or outlining before getting too far along with a very complicated work.

NaNo worked great for The Red Eye, because a) I didn’t outline it first, b) it required zero research beyond very, very minor things, and c) it has a contemporary setting and centers around a character in a career field similar to work I myself had done before (the radio show hosting, not the dragonslaying and telekinetic powers, of course). Thus, it could essentially flow freely as inspiration struck with little in the way of all the things that can stall a book. The other successful attempts I made at this endeavor were in a similar vein: sequels to The Red Eye, thus also with the easy setting and characters, and Blood Makes Noise, which (though not officially) basically takes place in the same universe and is also contemporary fantasy. With BMN, I did have to do some research, but it was travel-based; my protagonists are on the run from a baddie and basically drive around the country to avoid him. Thus, the most I did was some map searches and calculations of gas mileage and travel speed in different weather conditions, all of which was pretty painless and interesting.

So why did I fail this year? I tried to deviate from this model too much. Instead of working on a writable-out-of-the-box idea, I started working on the sequel to my admittedly complex time travel novel, The Curiosity Killers, the bulk of which I wrote over a period of about three years. I did research, both historical and scientific, and probably spent just as much time reading or actively researching as I did writing. Though I aimed to scale back the necessary amount of research required for its sequel, The Girl with Mechanical Wings, when I spent an entire day making a database of members of the Roanoke Colony and another day reading the released Project Mogul reports about the Roswell incident, I knew I was in trouble—there was no way, without leaving great swaths of the book unwritten pending research, that I could complete this undertaking in just a month. Even toward the end, I deluded myself, but upon realizing I was still lacking important research on the status of interracial marriage laws in the 1940s (yes, as you can tell, this is a book about a lot of things), I knew I had to throw in the towel. With just over 21,000 words completed mid-month, I had to rethink my strategy.

About that time, an editor I met at a convention announced an anthology call on a subject I’ve long been fascinated by. The deadline wasn’t for a few months, and the length requirement sounded feasible. I set my novel aside and decided to permit myself some leeway—if I couldn’t finish 50,000 words on one piece, I would see if I could work on multiple projects and complete the required number of words cumulatively between them. And, while I wound up the month having written a total of 29,329 words on both pieces together, this was still too short to “win.” I am, on paper, a failure.

Seriously? This isn’t what failure looks like, not by a long shot.

I’m about 25% of the way through a sequel to my first science fiction novel, and I’ve completed the first draft of an almost-novelette-length horror story close to 7,000 words long. Nearly 30,000 words in a month when I’ve worked full-time and had multiple family and extracurricular obligations is pretty darn impressive. In between all that, I did proofreading on two separate works and released both a print and ebook second editions of a short story collection. The only failure here is in the arbitrary, prize-less contest which, even if I’d “won,” would have still required massive amounts of revision. If anything, November was one of my most successful writing months in recent memory, yet I don’t get to claim bragging rights for this contest. I’m extremely proud of my friends and colleagues who did reach their goals, but I think what I accomplished isn’t too shabby, either.

I like writing quickly, don’t get me wrong, and I think practicing writing quickly at a steady clip is an important training exercise for new and aspiring novelists. But what really got The Curiosity Killers complete during its drafting was a slow and steady pace with revision and research done along the way rather than in a big, anxiety-riddled flurry at the end. With projects needing a lot of research, especially, it may not be that you have to spend three or four years on a single book, but trying to cram it into thirty days will leave it shoddy and unsupported. If you skimp on research up front, you’re likely to need to make bigger revisions once you’ve had a chance to go back and figure out if you were correct in your assumptions and placeholders. My goal is still to get The Girl with Mechanical Wings done relatively soon and definitely before 2016 is over, but I’m glad I didn’t try to dash through it so fast.

My advice for anyone else who “failed” at NaNo this year is, in sum, this: some projects fit quick writing very well, and some simply do not. Know which kind of book you want to write before you begin. If you want to have 50,000 words completed on November 30th, put your truly ambitious project aside and work on something a little simpler. Both the simple book and the harder one will thank you for understanding the differences between them, and they will both be better in the end.

]]>https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2015/12/01/nanowrimo-2015-success-in-failure/feed/0kwtaylorwriterKindle edition of Grinning Cracks is now available!https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2015/11/30/kindle-edition-of-grinning-cracks-is-now-available/
https://kwtaylorwriter.com/2015/11/30/kindle-edition-of-grinning-cracks-is-now-available/#respondMon, 30 Nov 2015 21:39:59 +0000http://kwtaylorwriter.com/?p=427Continue reading →]]>The definitive second edition of my short story collection Grinning Cracks is now out in both paperback and Kindle editions. The Kindle edition is $3.99 if you don’t already have the paperback, but is offered at a deep discount if you do, and it’s FREE if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber! How cool is that?

If you like old-fashioned paper things, though, totally do check out the hard copy. At $9.99, yet filled with thirty-three stories and two poems, it is less than 30 cents per piece! It’s less than 7 cents a page! And it’s got horror, fairytale, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, bleakness, romance, despair, and comedy. So, really, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for.